Snapstream, who brought us BeyondTV and Snapstream Enterprise, has launched a more budget-friendly standalone TV search engine appliance for enterprises. The Snapstream Mini costs $2000 ($6000 less than the original Snapstream Server) and offers most of the capabilities of the more expensive product. One of the main differentiators is memory capacity; the Mini offers a little over 1000 hours of recordable content whereas the server product allows 2300 hours of recordings.
The Snapstream Enterprise products are a cross between a powerful DVR and a search engine. The Snapstream allows enterprises to record thousands of hours of TV (from both satellite and digital cable sources) and search inside the recordings for keywords such as a company or individual’s name. The interface looks and feels like a consumer DVR so it’s pretty easy to use. The product allow multiple users to schedule and search inside recording via a laptop, desktop or through the TV itself. Users can record several shows at once (the Mini allows 2 shows simultaneously, the Server allows up to 10 shows to be recorded at the same time) and have email alerts sent to users when a search item is mentioned. The products also allows users to trim and clip the records, email a clip url and burn recording onto a DVD.
This is undoubtedly an incredibly useful tool. Enterprises from a diverse set of sectors have already been using the Snapstream Server. For example, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign used the Snapstream to monitor the media’s coverage of her and her campaign. The E! channel’s “The Soup” uses the product to find relevant clips and content for the show. Emerson College’s Communications program uses the product for educations purposes.
A hybrid of digital media and old media, the Mini now offers businesses a pretty powerful media capability at a fraction of the price. And with the current state of the economy, this product has definite potential.
This is a very interesting device for educational applications. The Department of Journalism at Emerson College uses the SnapStream Enterprise TV Server to gain access to a constant stream of televised newscasts for classroom study.
(http://www.snapstream.com/Enterprise/casestudy/emerson.asp)
brilliant and perfect for my student budget.
http://tr.im/gk8j
Thanks for writing about it. It can be very helpful for university professors and researchers. However, few people know about Snapstream. So, the company should add in some more promotion in the media and internet.
Nice info. It could be a very interesting thing for educational organizations or for students.
very interesting
If anyone’s interested, here’s a YouTube video that demonstrates the TV search functionality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uYnqF_2DQk&eurl=http://www.snapstream.com/enterprise/&feature=player_embedded
(I work at SnapStream)
I’ve been an extremely happy customer of Snapstream with their BeyondTV software for a number of years now. This sounds like a very interesting product for sure.
I am a paid customer to redlasso.com, and it has been very useful to my business. Through their web based platform (no hardware) and for a reasonable price, I have access to monitor over 100 sources for… roughly… over 40,000 hours of content nationally and locally. I know Universities, PR Firms, sports teams and companies are using it to monitor media like myself. Its a pretty cool and slick service. I could see more schools getting big use out of it.
I work at newsy.com and that’s how we discover and synthesize news clips to produce newsy videos.
thanks for sharing …
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